


And The Rest Was History

by tomato_greens



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Documentation, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:31:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was, at its heart, a love story."</p><p>- Brown, Delilah. <i>A Grand Affair: The Secret Romance That Saved a Nation.</i> New York: Doubleday, 2011. Print.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> Oh––hi there, fandom. This year has been a bit of a sea change for me. Nice to see you again.
> 
> I owe a particular debt to [justsayins](http://justsayins.tumblr.com), [sea-bells](http://sea-bells.tumblr.com), [carnovsky](http://carnovsky.tumblr.com), [Sandy](http://interrosand.tumblr.com), [Persiflager](http://persiflager.tumblr.com),[nautilicious](http://nautilicious.tumblr.com), [khoshekhs](http://khoshekhs.tumblr.com), [bewinsome](http://bewinsome.tumblr.com), and the [#antidiogenes crowd](http://antidiogenes.tumblr.com), all of whom held my hand and spruced up my sentences. I have always been a solitary writer; it's been astonishingly nice not to work in a void.
> 
> I should note that while this fic follows immediately after CA:TWS, it is _not_ compliant with the Agents of SHIELD TV show, nor with most comics canon––though I did split the difference in some origin story details. I also brushed up my rusty high school CSS skills in order to format this story; if you find the style annoying, the fic should still be perfectly readable once you turn it off. 
> 
> This fic is GRAPHICS-HEAVY. I'll put up a text-only version once it's all finished!

Brown, Delilah. _A Grand Affair: The Secret Romance That Saved a Nation._ New York: Doubleday, 2011. Print.

* * *

ADVOCATE.com

# The A-List Interview: Steve Rogers

 _With a service record that spans decades and shoulders that span the New York skyline, Steve Rogers still insists that he’s just your average red-blooded all-American boy._  
By Brandon Voss - June 21 2012

It’s only a few months out from the big defrost and Captain America––or, as high school history textbooks like to remind us, Captain Steven Grant Rogers of the Howling Commandos––has already saved the world. But now that things have calmed down, he’s got other things on his plate, including readjusting to life in the 21st century.

 **The Advocate: Let’s get the big question out of the way. Had you ever heard of The Advocate before we invited you to do this interview?**  
Steve Rogers: No, I’m sorry, I can’t say that I had. But to be fair, I’ve been pretty busy.

 **That’s certainly true! Thanks for, like, saving all our lives, by the way.**  
 _[Laughs]_ All in a day’s work.

 **But you do know our demographic?**  
Well, I looked up your website before meeting you. It only seemed polite.

 **So you know you’re mostly talking to the LGBT crowd.**  
Yes. But I think you’re missing some letters there, aren’t you? Q. And I. And A, right?

 **Oh, yes, I guess I did miss those. You have been catching up!**  
I try, anyway. This stuff seems really important. I don’t want to offend anyone, or overlook anyone.

 **Wow, you are just as nice in the flesh as you seem in those old newsreels. So, Captain Rogers––**  
You can just call me Steve.

 **Somewhere my ninth grade history teacher is rolling over in her grave.**  
 _[Laughs]_ Well, if it makes you uncomfortable––

 **Did I say that? I don’t remember saying that. So, Steve, how are things going in the twenty-first century? Are you adjusting?**  
I think I am, yeah, although it’s definitely been a slower process than I think anyone hoped. But I’m starting to get the hang of things.

 **I notice you’re wearing pretty typical 2012 gear.**  
You guys are so lucky! There isn’t any polio, and you get to wear blue jeans wherever you want? I don’t think you realize how good you have it.

 **And what do you do in your downtime? You used to be an artist, right?**  
Yeah. Yeah, I had to ask the Smithsonian for some of my sketchbooks back, actually, which was a very surreal conversation.

 **I imagine it was. Were they understanding?**  
Yes, yes, the head curator there was really helpful and kind about it. I let her keep some of the better ones, but some I wanted for sentimental reasons.

 **Speaking of sentiment, rumors have flown that you had several big romances back in the day.**  
I think all those comic books they released really exaggerated both my free time and the first impressions I tend to leave on people. I was pretty scrawny most of my life. And a lot of the time, I still think of myself like that.

 **Really, no sweeping romances during your time on the front? What about [Strategic Scientific Reserve Agent] Peggy Carter?**  
Peggy? No, no. She was a very close friend, and she still is. But being on the front lines didn’t leave us time for anything but business. Anyway, she fell in love with someone else and got married after the war was over.

 **And your best friend, Bucky Barnes?**  
Bucky? What about Bucky? Peggy had absolutely no interest in him, I can tell you that much. It really chafed at him, actually.

 **Come on, don’t be coy, Steve. You and Bucky, you never––?**  
Oh. _[Laughs]_ Bucky was a real ladykiller.

 **Did you see the bestseller about you two that was released last year? A Grand Affair?**  
Yes, I was told about it. But it was published before I woke up.

 **Among other things, it alleges that you and Bucky were in a secret relationship.**  
I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on it.

 **Look, Cap, let me ask you right out. Are you gay?**  
No, I don’t identify that way.

 **What do you identify as?**  
I––look, you’re not going to understand.

 **Try me.**  
Everyone thinks it’s old-fashioned or silly when I say this, but honestly, I can’t identify as anything in particular, in terms of sexual orientation or even gender, because it’s my job as Captain America to try and understand everyone. To try and represent anyone. Obviously, I am who I am, but it’s my job to try to understand what it would be like to be a––an African-American woman from Texas, or anybody else who lives in this country. And it’s my job to try and do right by everyone I can, whether or not they look or act or think like me. So it doesn’t really matter what people think I am or am not, because at the end of the day, I’m not just myself. I haven’t been since I started wearing the shield. I’m here for everyone else, too.

 **Wow. That’s quite an ideal to live up to.**  
Thank you, I think. It comes with the name, though. I heard––on the internet, I saw someone say, "It’s Captain America, not Captain Heterosexual White Man From Brooklyn." And I think that's very true.

 **That’s very forward-thinking of you.**  
A lot of people have said that to me, but I don’t understand what’s so forward-thinking about supporting freedom and equality. Equality should be a right, not a privilege.

 **On that note, what’s your opinion on same-sex marriage?**  
I think anything that lets people express their love for one another has to be a good thing.

 **Tell me, Steve, does it ever get overwhelming, being so dreamy and heroic?**  
 _[Laughs]_ I don’t think of myself that way. But I do try to be kind whenever I can, and I do try to take it one day at a time.

* * *


	2. THE SET-UP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is one scene in this chapter in which the POV character has consensual but unpleasant sex. Just be warned!

* * *

**APRIL 8, 1926**

Bucky’s ma has a terrible habit of dragging him to her special friend Mr. Halloway’s apartment over on Congress Street, even though Bucky is in the third grade and is perfectly capable of entertaining himself, thank you very much.

“It’s more trouble than it’s worth to leave you alone. And anyway, you love playing with the Rogers boy!” she says whenever he protests.

“That’s not true!” Bucky finally shouts back one day, trying to twist away from his mother’s tight grip on his shirt collar. Steve Rogers is only a year younger than Bucky, but Bucky thinks he looks like a baby, with knees that stick out like hubcaps from his scrawny chicken legs and his hideous droopy sweater that always smells overwhelmingly of mothballs. “I do not like Steve Rogers!”

“Then I guess you’re going to have to learn to,” his mother hisses, pinching the back of his neck hard enough to sting. Bucky swats at her hand, but his mother knows all his tricks and evades his flailing arm without ever letting him go. “Now, you’re going to behave like the president you’re named after, James Buchanan Barnes, or so help me––”

Mr. Halloway opens his door. “Everything all right out here? You treating your mother like she deserves?” he asks, giving Bucky the hairy eye.

Bucky knows a lost battle when he marches into one. “Everything’s fine, sir,” he says.

He kicks surreptitiously at the doorframe, but Mr. Halloway is too busy smiling at Bucky’s ma to notice. “Why don’t I get you some milk,” Mr. Halloway says, same as he always does. “You can drink it in the kitchen.”

The milk tastes like it’s been in the bottle too long, but at least it gives Bucky something to make faces at. The kitchen isn’t much more than a countertop and a stool, so it’s not like Bucky can’t see his ma and Mr. Halloway making eyes at each other in the front room. He doesn’t much care if his ma is sweet on Mr. Halloway––he’s a lot nicer than Ma’s last special friend Mr. Saunders, whose voice got rough after a drink and whose hands got rough after two––but hearing the high arc of his mother’s laughter makes his stomach feel strangely empty even when he’s just eaten supper.

“Son, why don’t you go play with Stevie next door?” Mr. Halloway calls, and Bucky sighs.

“Sure thing, Mr. Halloway,” he says, because he knows how to be a good son when it really counts, and lets himself out of the apartment. His mother laughs again. The milk curdles in Bucky’s stomach. Ma saves all her best Sunday dresses for Mr. Halloway, the white one with blue glass beads for buttons, the gray one with seed pearls sewn into the hem; it just doesn’t seem fair that he should get all of her best laughs, too.

Bucky knocks dutifully on the Rogers’ door, but no one answers, so he decides discretion is the better part of obedience and hightails it out of the building. The Pesci twins are usually kicking around somewhere, and they’ve got enough cousins to put together an entire football team, so he’s heading up towards their block when he hears Steve Rogers’ stupid voice squeak out, “Give that back! It’s mine––it’s mine, you’re not being fair!”

 _Jesus Christ_ , Bucky thinks, and then, reflexively, thinking of Father O’Brien’s ropy forearms and habitually grim expression, _sorry, God_. But trust Steve Rogers to know exactly what to say to ensure whoever’s knocking him around won’t hold back their punches.

Bucky turns the corner to see Steve in his shirtsleeves, tugging uselessly at a fuzzy green mass trapped between Anton Biryukov’s giant fists.

“I’m doing you a favor, Rogers,” Anton laughs, “you’re wearing this poor thing out. It needs to be condemned.”

“Give it back!” Steve hollers. Anton tries to break Steve’s grip by lifting his arms above his head, but Steve just clutches on tighter, his feet swinging as he’s lifted off the sidewalk. “I could do this all day,” Steve huffs, his face starting to turn red.

 _Jesus Christ_ , Bucky thinks again, close enough to admiration that it doesn’t feel like blasphemy.

“Cut it out, Anton,” someone says. Both Steve and Anton whip around to look straight at Bucky, which is when he realizes his fists are up and his throat is dry with fear.

“What’d you say, punk?” Anton asks, sneering.

“Uh––um,” Bucky stutters, which gives Steve just enough time and leverage to kick Anton straight between the legs, grab whatever-it-is from Anton’s suddenly weak hands, and pull Bucky away from the scene of the crime, running as fast as both of their legs will take them.

“Oh my God, you’re crazy,” Bucky blurts once they’re safely locked in the Rogers’ apartment.

“Hey, speak for yourself,” Steve snaps, ears and cheeks red. “I’m not the one who couldn’t even remember he was in the middle of standing up to a bully.” He shakes out the mysterious green bundle, which resolves into Steve’s usual shapeless sweater.

“Oh my God, you were fighting Anton Biryukov over a dumb sweater?” Bucky yells, waving his arms around in shock. “You must be screwy!”

Steve lays the disgusting thing out on the floor. Bucky can see at least one tear from all the way on the other side of the room, a ragged black stripe cutting the front almost in half. “Yeah, you said that already. And it’s not dumb, it’s––it’s––”

“Are you _crying_?”

“No,” Steve hiccups, obviously lying through his teeth.

Bucky doesn’t know what comes over him, why he scoots himself next to Steve’s small, hunched body, but the next thing he knows he’s got an arm around Steve’s thin shoulders and Steve’s face tucked into the crook of his neck. He tries to remember what his ma says to him when he cries. “There, there,” he tries. “It’s all right.” It comes out stiff as a board, but Steve doesn’t appear to notice, just curls further into Bucky’s body and sobs a little harder. Bucky keeps mumbling nonsense like he’s heard people do in the pictures, letting Steve soak through the collar of his shirt, until finally Steve’s still and silent against him and everything feels somehow raw.

“It was my dad’s,” Steve says, very, very quietly, his voice a low rasp against Bucky’s throat. “I didn’t want Anton to take it away.”

Bucky never knew his own father, but if someone tried to steal the photograph his mother keeps on the table by the door, he knows he’d claw them to pieces. “I could ask my ma if she could patch it up for you. She’s pretty handy with that stuff.”

Steve shakes his head, his hair tickling the underside of Bucky’s chin. “No,” he sighs. “No, I guess I had better just keep it safe. Put it away, where it won’t get torn again.”

Bucky wonders at that, that Steve, whose entire personality has always seemed to involve taking stupid risks and daring people to put him in his place, should be so easily defeated. “You don’t want to fight for it?”

Steve finally lifts his head, nose and lips dragging briefly along the side of Bucky’s neck.“I fought for it enough times already,” he says, and he sounds smaller than Bucky’s ever heard him––like his voice fits his body, for once. It’s disconcertingly awful. “Anyway, how do I know if he was a good guy? I never even met him.”

“I’ll bet he was good,” Bucky says fiercely, “I’ll bet he was the best.”

“That’s what my mother says, anyway.” Steve wipes his eyes with his hands and gently detangles himself from Bucky’s grasp. “Sorry I was bawling. You don’t have to stay. I know you don’t like me very much.”

Bucky ignores the sick, guilty lurch in the pit of his stomach and shakes his head. “That’s not true. I like you fine.”

“Yeah? Well. I like you, too, I guess, if you’re going to stand up to jerks like Anton.”

“Jeez, give an inch,” Bucky sighs, the way Mr. Halloway sighs whenever Bucky begs a nickel off of him.

“I never took anything that wasn’t given to me free of charge,” Steve retorts, but something like a smile starts to build around his mouth, and boy, is Bucky glad to see it.

* * *

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL INPATIENT PSYCHIATRIC UNIT  
3800 Reservoir Road, N.W. - 5th Floor  
Washington, D.C. 20007  
(202) 444-3960 

**CLEARANCE LEVEL 9 AND ABOVE  
BIOMETRIC SCANS REQUIRED TO VIEW**

INITIAL EVALUATION

Date of Exam: 4/30/2014  
Time of Exam: 4:00 PM

Patient Name: Barnes, James Buchanan  
Patient Number: 1000010544165

HISTORY:  
     James is a 29-year-old American man XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX before working as a XXXXXXXXXXXX in XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX USSR. He has been exposed to unusually severe traumatic abuse including experimental XXXXXXXXXXX procedures as well as severe psychosocial conditioning, though at present there does not appear to be permanent brain damage. When lucid, he describes feelings of extreme dissociation, anxiety, and fear; these often prevent normal functioning even outside of psychotic episodes. Functioning is further prohibited by severe memory loss, though James does appear to be regaining some basic memories now that repeated XXXXXXXXXXX procedures have been stopped. (Note: James is able to remember skills, facts, languages, etc. without incident - memory loss is concentrated on matters of identity and interpersonal recognition.) During psychotic episodes, James is generally unaware of his name or his location and frequently becomes violent. Based on the risk of morbidity without treatment and James’s description of interference with functioning, severity is estimated to be high. James has self-reported prior episodes including psychosis, supported by XXXXXXXXXXXX’s testimony of their time together in XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX USSR. However, he was never offered treatment beyond XXXXXXXXXXX procedure. 

PAST PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY:  
           _Prior Psychiatric Disorder:_ Before his time as XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, James had no recorded history of psychiatric disorder.  
           _Outpatient Treatment:_ No previous treatment.  
           _Suicidal/Self-Injurious:_ While serving as a sergeant XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, James engaged in self-destructive behaviors.  
           _Addiction/Use History:_ No history of substance abuse, though XXXXXXXXXXX has been known to use addictive substances in training.  
           _Psychotropic Medication History:_ James reports that XXXXXXXXXXX regularly gave him psychotropic drugs without his consent.

SOCIAL/DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY:  
      James is a 29 year old man who was, before becoming XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, in a longterm stable relationship. He is American by birth but usually considers himself to be Russian. He was raised Roman Catholic but has not practiced since early adolescence. He has no children.  
      _Employment History:_ James was a sergeant during XXXXXXXX in the U.S. Army, then a XXXXXXXXX operative XXXXXXXXXXXX. He is currently unemployed.  
      _Financial Status:_ James is supported by his partner, who is financially stable.  
      _Support System:_ James has the social support of the following: his partner. (Note: Even when lucid, James does not always recognize his partner, and he does not consider himself to be in a relationship. However, in part due to their unusual history and in part because James is not currently able to legally represent himself, his partner has remained involved in decisions regarding James’s care.)  
      _Strengths/Assets:_ James is remarkably resilient.  
      _Patient’s Goals:_ Short term - lessen the severity of psychotic episodes, retrieve some memories regarding identity. Long term - if possible, eventual independent functioning. 

FAMILY HISTORY:  
     Father had history of alcohol abuse.  
     Family psychiatric history is otherwise negative. There is no other history of psychiatric disorders, psychiatric treatment or hospitalization, suicidal behaviors or substance abuse in closely related family members.

MEDICAL HISTORY:  
      _Allergies:_ N/A  
      _Current Medical Diagnoses:_ N/A  
          Note: James has consistently scored between 12.2 and 12.8 on the Roy-Lemli-Ibrahim scale - two points below metahuman.  
      _Current Medications (Non-Pyschotropic) include:_ N/A  
      _Past Medical History:_ Left arm amputated after XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Complications arising from improper medical care has left him with moderate to severe pain in his left shoulder, although it is fully functional.

Medical history is otherwise negative and James has no other history of serious illness, injury, operation, or hospitalization. He does not have a history of asthma, seizure disorder, concussion, or heart problems. 

MENTAL STATUS:  
     When lucid, James is often distracted, irritable, casually groomed, and tense, but he is fully communicative. He exhibits speech that is normal in rate, volume, and articulation, and is spontaneous and coherent. Language skills are intact. Mood shows signs of depression and his affect is rather flat compared to his verbal content. There are no signs of hallucinations, but - probably linked to his memory loss - he does periodically show signs of extreme dissociation, leading to temporary delusions of persecution and subsequent violence. Unusually, even during these episodes, James does not show further signs of disordered thinking; rather, within the world of his delusion, his associations are intact and his thinking quite logical. When lucid, no suicidal ideas or intentions are present, and homicidal ideas or intentions are convincingly denied. During dissociative and psychotic episodes, homicidal ideas and intentions are clearly present but, surprisingly, only in a defensive capacity; James becomes violent when he perceives threats, but does not attack unless he feels provoked in some manner. Cognitive functioning is intact and age appropriate. Fund of knowledge is limited, but that is most likely due to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX stasis rather than poor cognitive function. Short term memory appears intact, whereas long term memory is much less accessible. Clinically, IQ appears to be in the above average range. Insight into illness is usually poor, but occasionally fair. Social judgment is usually poor, but occasionally intact. There are signs of anxiety. Muscle strength is excellent and equal bilaterally. There is muscular rigidity across James’s shoulders and neck. Station is erect and normal. 

DIAGNOSES:  
     The following diagnoses are based on currently available information and may change as additional information becomes available.  
Axis I: (Complex) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (309.81), Depersonalization Disorder (300.6), Dissociative Amnesia (300.12), Multiple Episodes, Severe With Psychotic Features  
Axis II: No diagnosis; see medical history  
Axis III: See medical history  
Axis IV: Until a month ago, long term exposure to psychological and physical abuse including torture, long term exposure to war and other hostilities, inadequate psychiatric care, inadequate medical care  
Axis V: 32 

INSTRUCTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/PLAN:  
     In accordance with Georgetown’s agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense, James will be admitted to Georgetown University Hospital’s Special Inpatient Care Unit, with plans to move him to the Psychiatric Partial Hospitalization Program when he is stable enough to attend. The risks and benefits of psychotropic medications were explained to James as well as to James’s partner.  
     Cognitive Behavior Therapy  
     EMDR Therapy  
     Relaxation Techniques

Start Buspirone 10 mg (Anxiety)  
Start Bupropion 200 mg (Depression)  
Start Perphenazine 8 mg (Anti-Psychotic)  
Start Ambien CR 6.25 mg (Insomnia)

Note: Due to partially psychogenic nature of memory loss and due to recent retrieval of some memories, we are not pharmacologically treating those symptoms at this time.

99202AI (Office/ OUT PUT, NEW)

Electronically Signed  
By: Lizethe Garcia, M.D.  
On: 4/30/2014 4:22:20 PM

* * *

**SEPTEMBER 19, 1931**

They hold the funeral on a rainy, dank Sunday, one of those ugly autumn days when the leaves hang in dark stains from their graying branches and everything seems long-dead. Bucky doesn’t know how the service was paid for when there had never been any money for penny sundaes or new shoes, but someone must have coughed up the dough for the plot and the coffin and the solemn hush of a dozen grieving people gathered around his mother’s empty body. 

Father O’Brien’s face looks especially grizzled in the stormy half-light, like he’s swallowed up all of Bucky’s hurt for himself––Bucky just feels muddled and strange and very far away, though he can’t stop thinking about the moment Ma had drawn in one last great gasp of a breath. Becca had been playing with her doll in the corner, and Bucky had realized in a cold and sudden terror that he wouldn’t know how to fix it if it ripped, or how to make her another one. Their mother had just darned up an old sock and added on a face with her clever needle.

Plenty of people send––sent––Bucky’s ma disapproving looks on Sundays because Bucky’s last name is Barnes and Becca's should have been Halloway, but Father O’Brien always smiles at them. Smiled. Bucky feels the thick knot in his throat quiver for one terrifying moment, and he knows if it dislodges then that’s it, that’s it, the game is up, and his mother will really be gone. He wipes his eyes and his throat settles down. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” Father O’Brien intones.

Steve pokes Bucky in the side.

“Quit it!” Bucky hisses, knocking his hand away. “Leave me alone!”

“I’m not gonna do that ’til you––” Steve starts, but Mrs. Rogers places a quelling hand on his shoulder before he can go on.

Bucky’s glad of it. Steve never knows when to quit, and usually that’s one of the things Bucky likes about him, but today is not a day for Steve’s stubborn insistence that he knows Bucky better than Bucky knows himself. Steve doesn’t know anything, and for all that he talks a good game, neither does Bucky. His mother’s last words were, “Could you turn up the radio?” but the ones that he keeps hearing over and over again are, “Be a good boy, Buck. Look after your sister,” because they feel like a greater injustice than her dying at all. 

Finally, finally, Father O’Brien stops talking. Everyone turns to Bucky like they expect him to do something, but Bucky’s never sat through a whole funeral before and he can’t remember what’s supposed to happen next. Mrs. Rogers pats his shoulder, and suddenly Bucky recalls the calm instructions that she gave him this morning, that he’s supposed to throw dirt in his dead mother’s face because God thinks it will keep him humble. Bucky takes a step forward, then another, then finds he can’t take a third. He breathes in, lifts his foot. Nothing happens. He breathes out. Nothing happens.

Steve punches him in the small of his back.

“Quit it!” Bucky shouts, and Mrs. Rogers’ fingers flutter away from him, shocked. Everyone else stares. Bucky closes his eyes. When he’s opened them again, he’s standing at the edge of the grave, watching his own hand toss soil down into the deep. He stares at the coffin. He is thirteen years old and he’s lived his whole life without a dime to his name. He knows what death is.

Steve appears at Bucky’s elbow and whispers, “Come on, you have to let everyone else have a turn.” 

Bucky lets himself be led away. He blinks and some uncertain number of hours have passed. The woman from the home upstate has come for Rebecca; Steve tightens his grip, but Bucky’s appointment isn’t until tomorrow. He blinks again and the gray day has faded into a gray twilight, and he’s sitting at Mrs. Rogers’ table, staring at a bowl of stew. He blinks again and it’s dark outside, rain pounding against the windows, and he and Steve are curled up under Steve’s bed.

Bucky blinks again and he’s still cocooned under Steve’s bed, pillows and blankets and all. “Oh,” he says. “I’m here.”

“Hi,” Steve answers, crawling towards him. “You’re back.”

Like he’s been dropped back into his body, Bucky aches all over, every part of him stinging with his loss. 

“Sssssssh, you’re gonna be fine,” Steve whispers, throwing his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, which is how Bucky realizes he’s crying––sobbing, actually, all of him subsumed in it, like when Rebecca was learning to walk and skinned her knee for the first time. It’s the shock that hurts the worst, Bucky thinks dazedly. But no, that’s wrong; that’s what Bucky’s mother had said as she kissed Rebecca’s tender knee, and the thing that hurts the worst is that she’s never going to say it again.

One of Steve’s hands has found its way to Bucky’s hair, and he strokes the too-long strands at the nape of Bucky’s neck. “Let it out, Buck. You can let it out.”

Bucky cries in the way that he hasn’t since Anton Biryukov did him a favor and taught him that crying was for punks and babies; he cries until his head is pounding in time with his heartbeat and his face is hot and swollen. He runs out of tears before he’s ready to stop, so he takes long, shuddering breaths and lets Steve run his fingers through his hair. 

“You done?” Steve asks, and, somehow, just like that, Bucky is.

“My mother’s dead,” he says.

“Yeah, she is,” Steve agrees, calm in that way he has, probably inherited from Mrs. Rogers. “But you’re okay.”

“I don’t know. I guess so.” 

“Bucky, I, maybe I shouldn’t ask, but I’ve got to know. Do you know where you’re going yet? Do you know––they’re not sending you upstate with Becca, are they?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t know. Probably not. I’m, I’m too old for most people to want to adopt, so there wouldn’t be any point. Nobody wants––an orphan, not if they can’t pretend he’s theirs.”

There’s a slight, wet touch on Bucky’s cheek that might be a kiss, but it’s gone almost before Bucky notices it. “I’m glad you aren’t going to be anybody else’s,” Steve says fiercely, drawing Bucky in a little closer.

He feels like he’s been pressed flat, all the Barnes squeezed out, but if there’s anyone he can trust with the Bucky that’s left over it’s Steve––Steve, who’s never cared about being called a punk or a baby, even though he’s so small he still gets it worse than Bucky ever did; Steve, who’s the best friend Bucky never asked for.

* * *

**Washington Post ONLINE - Texts and Transcripts Archive**  
 **eMediaMillWorks - May 3, 2014 - Text: SHIELD Representatives News Conference**  
 **The following is a transcript of the news conference held by former SHIELD. Deputy Directory Maria Hill and Steven Rogers (“Captain America”) on the Natasha Romanoff (“Black Widow”) SHIELD security breach and helicarrier crash in Washington, D.C.**

**[…]**

**HILL:** I’m sure there are questions, so I’ll open the floor up now. 

**QUESTION:** Agent Hill, military high-ups have been quoted as saying that Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff have “laid waste to our intelligence apparatus.” Are there plans to rebuild SHIELD?  
 **HILL:** As I already mentioned, two weeks ago President Ellis announced the official end of the SHIELD program following its catastrophic security breach in April. As of this time, we have no plans to try and rebuild SHIELD, but are working instead with the heads of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, as well as recalibrating the Department of Defense after Secretary Pierce’s death, to maintain appropriate levels of national security and to remove anything that remains of the HYDRA infrastructure within SHIELD. 

**QUESTION:** What are you doing, if anything, to make reparations for the damages caused to Washington, D.C.?  
 **HILL:** We are working to help rebuild the area that was destroyed in the D.C. helicarrier crash, just as we worked to rebuild New York after the Chitauri attack, and plan to continue doing so until the river has been fully restored to its state before the wreckage, and until all displaced persons have found permanent shelter. Much of the SHIELD budget has been rerouted, including two million dollars in immediate assistance from the Rehabilitative Services Administration to help those who have suffered mental and physical injuries, those who have been rendered homeless, and those in need of temporary shelter as a result of the helicarrier crash. 

**QUESTION:** And for Captain America. Do you stand by the decisions you’ve made while in SHIELD’s employ, including boarding a trespassing ship––[INAUDIBLE]  
 **ROGERS:** I don’t think––  
 **HILL:** We’re not answering questions of that nature at this time, thank you.

 **QUESTION:** Do you support Agent Romanoff’s actions during her confrontation with the late Secretary of Defense Alexander Pierce, such as her unsanctioned release of classified materials?  
 **ROGERS:** Unquestionably. She did what she had to do. And she saved us all doing it.

[CROSSTALK]

 **QUESTION:** Really? Even though those documents included details about SHIELD that have led to public outcry?  
 **ROGERS:** Yes. Unquestionably.  
 **HILL:** We have always appreciated Agent Romanoff’s consistent dedications to SHIELD’s mission.

 **QUESTION:** A mission based on keeping the United States safe. What about the damage the release of classified information may have done to our national defense? What will the ultimate ramifications be of Agent Romanoff’s actions?  
 **ROGERS:** I don’t think you understand the ramifications of having the Secretary of Defense turn out to be––[INAUDIBLE]  
 **HILL:** I speak for every uncompromised employee of SHIELD when I say we were horrified and devastated by the undeniable evidence of HYDRA infiltration––

 **ROGERS:** [OFF MICROPHONE] But let me be very, very clear. Secretary Pierce was not a good man, as you all seem so desperate to believe now that he’s gone. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but unfortunately, I have to, since no one else seems willing to. He may have thought he wanted the best for this country, but he was willing to pay for that future in blood, and he was willing to pay for it with HYDRA’s money. And if the only way to stop him was to show everyone that the U.S. government’s hands are dirtier than they’re willing to admit, well, I admire Agent Romanoff for her bravery in the face of their cowardice. Our cowardice. We were all implicated in those files, for the good we did, or for the bad. But I have to think it’s better that the American people know what they’re paying for, who they’re really supporting when they vote and pay their taxes. Because this country doesn’t exist for all the Alexander Pierces to twist and manipulate and shape as he likes, or for SHIELD, or even for me. This country exists for everyone listening right now. This country should belong to her citizens before she belongs to anyone else. 

**HILL:** Well. That, that about sums that up.  
 **ROGERS:** And I think I should add that it wasn’t just Agent Romanoff, or Sergeant Wilson, or Agent Hill, or me who managed to stop HYDRA. Really, I owe everything to the dozens of SHIELD agents who backed my play when I asked them to go against orders from their compromised superiors. I know the security footage has leaked, and I know at least some of you have watched it. So you know I’m not exaggerating when I say it was only down to these agents and their quick-thinking, cooperation, and willingness to sacrifice their own safety that we were able to stop HYDRA at all.  
 **HILL:** [INAUDIBLE]  
 **ROGERS:** And that’s all I have to say about that.

 **QUESTION:** Well, Cap, on a lighter note––  
 **ROGERS:** Thank, uh, Thor.

[LAUGHTER]

 **QUESTION:** ––is it true that while recovering from the injuries you sustained in D.C., you’ve been living with teammate Sergeant Samuel Wilson, codenamed Falcon?  
 **ROGERS:** Sam’s a good friend of mine, and someone I’ve been able to trust. But I do actually live by myself. I might be 97 years old, but I know how to take care of myself.

[LAUGHTER]

 **HILL:** Let’s get back on topic, shall we?

 **QUESTION:** So you’re saying that you don’t live with Falcon? That you’re not in a relationship with him?  
 **ROGERS:** What? No, I––  
 **HILL:** That is absolutely and fundamentally not the topic of today’s conference, not to mention totally inappropriate.

 **QUESTION:** Cap, Cap, you’re unequivocally denying being in a relationship with Sam Wilson? With a man?  
 **ROGERS:** Look, Sam Wilson is, Sam is my friend, not the person I’m in a relationship with.  
 **HILL:** Okay, that’s it. We’re done here.

* * *

     05-03-2014 Fri 16:52:04  
     CAMERA #10 - HALLWAY 3  
     STARK SMARTCAM SECURITY MODEL 4328570 © 2012

     A woman in a pantsuit stands with her arms crossed, face turned away from the camera.  
     A man **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, PERSON IDENTIFIED: _STEVEN ROGERS_ ]** walks up beside her.  
     The woman turns her head slightly towards the man **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, PERSON IDENTIFIED: _MARIA HILL_ ]**.  
     She puts her hand on his shoulder **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, DIALOGUE IDENTIFIED:** _JESUS CHRIST, STEVE_ **]**.  
     He shakes his head **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, DIALOGUE IDENTIFIED:** _SORRY. I’M SO SORRY. I COULDN’T_ -[00:00:04 UNREADABLE]- _GET AWAY WITH THAT_ **]**.  
     The woman shrugs **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, DIALOGUE IDENTIFIED:** _YOU’RE A P.R. NIGHTMARE, BUT THAT’S WHY I HAVE MY JOB_ **]**.  
     The man nods **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, DIALOGUE IDENTIFIED:** _THANKS, MARIA. I APPRECIATE IT_ **]**.  
     The woman turns her head away **[ VISUAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE, DIALOGUE IDENTIFIED:** _LET’S GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE THOSE ASSHOLES CATCH UP AND MAKE US_ -[00:00:12 UNREADABLE]- **]**.  
     Both the woman and the man leave Camera #10’s range.

* * *

**JULY 3, 1933**

“He’s sleeping,” Mrs. Rogers says, when Bucky lets himself into the apartment with the key everyone pretends he doesn’t have. 

“Oh,” Bucky replies, snatching his hat off his head. Like her son, Mrs. Rogers is fine-boned and blonde; unlike Steve, whose affection is a sure and easy balm, Bucky is pretty certain that Mrs. Rogers hates him with every fiber of her maternal being. “I can go, if you’d prefer.”

Mrs. Rogers shakes her head, long-suffering as she usually is when she sees Bucky. The apartment smells of her as it always does, like soap, clean blankets, lavender water––nothing like the orphanage’s permanent stench, the unholy offspring of old sweat and harsh disinfectant. With her hair pulled severely back after her day at the hospital, Bucky thinks she looks like one of the statues at St. Joseph’s. Saint Joan, maybe, if only she had ever gotten the chance to grow up. “No, I know you’d sneak back in when you thought my back was turned.”

“Would a well-behaved boy like me do a terrible thing like that, Mrs. Rogers?” Bucky asks.

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” She waves him towards Steve’s bed in the corner. “I’m going out to see about supper. Don’t break anything while I’m gone.”

The door shuts behind her, and then it’s just Bucky, hat folded awkwardly between his hands, watching Steve tangling himself up in his bedsheets. Steve’s mouth is a red, wide-open slash in his pale face, and a deep rattle emanates from his chest whenever he breathes in; whatever damn germ is causing it seems to lodge behind Bucky’s breastbone, too, settling into an uncomfortable ache. 

“Steve. Hey, Steve,” Bucky says, and tries to nudge Steve further up his pillow so that the air has an easier path to his lungs. “Stevie. You gotta wake up a second.”

“Buck? Is that you?” Steve asks, blinking awake.

His eyes, Bucky thinks, are very blue––and for some reason Bucky thinks of his mother’s jewelry box, the one with the music maker hidden in the base and the impossibly delicate ivory dancer perched inside. Ma had hung onto the box even after she had pawned off all the jewelry, and Bucky used to wind it up for hours on end, letting the dancer twirl in her endless pirouettes. He’d lost track of the thing in the chaotic shuffle after Ma’s death, but he hopes it went upstate along with Becca. Something she can remember her family by. “Yeah, it’s me, pal. Can you sit up a little? You’re wheezing like a rackety old man.”

“It’s summer, I’m not supposed to be sick,” Steve grouses, but he shuffles his way upright, clinging to Bucky’s arm. “I’m turning fifteen in two weeks. I should be growing out of this by now.”

Bucky throws an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “Not sure you grow out of idiocy.”

Steve smacks Bucky on the thigh, too weak by half. Bucky sends up a quick and fervent prayer to a God he’s not sure he believes in–– _not this time, not this illness, not now, not now, not now_. “If anyone’s the idiot, it’s you, you jerk.”

“Yeah? Tell me how you figure that. Because I know for a fact that I’m not the one with a weak heart who got kicked in the chest last week––“

“Shut up, shut up!” Steve shoves his hand over Bucky’s mouth and looks wildly around. Bucky licks Steve’s palm, but Steve makes a disgusted face and holds on tighter. “Ma might hear you.”

“Look at you, Rogers, doing things your mother’d be ashamed of,” Bucky tuts, finally grabbing onto Steve’s wrist and forcing his hand away. “Don’t worry. She’s not here. Seriously, though, what was it this time? Someone stole your milk money? Someone––“

“They were attacking a girl,” Steve interrupts angrily, using his free hand to smack Bucky’s leg again. “What was I supposed to do? Ignore it? Ignore her?”

“You weren’t supposed to do something that left a boot print on your chest!” Bucky shouts, then realizes, when Steve takes in a pained breath, that his hand has spasmed tightly onto Steve’s shoulder. “Sorry, sorry,” he sighs, feeling like the worst kind of hypocrite. “You have to take care of yourself, Stevie.”

“I got you for that, don’t I?” Steve asks, face creasing into a grin, and Bucky can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes––but Steve is right. Bucky’s the worst kind of enabler.

“You’re such an ass,” Bucky huffs, and because God is in cahoots with Father O’Brien and the rest of the universe to punish Bucky for his doubt, he says it right as Mrs. Rogers walks through the door.

“James Buchanan Barnes, you get off that bed right this instant and you clean out your mouth. And to think I was going to invite you to stay for supper!”

“Aw––can’t he stay, Ma?” Steve asks, pulling on his best hangdog look. “I’m a good influence on him, just imagine where he’ll go if we let him run wild.”  
“I shudder to think.”

Steve pushes Bucky off the bed. “What are you waiting around for, Buck? Make yourself useful and set the table.”

“I can’t believe you raised such a disrespectful child, Mrs. Rogers,” Bucky says, mournful. “And with you so refined.”

“Well, I can’t believe the things that come out of your mouth, Mr. Barnes,” Mrs. Rogers answers tartly. “And my son is absolutely right. If you’re staying for supper, after all that, you might as well set the table.”

* * *

* * *

**FEBRUARY 12, 1936**

As long as it’s all theoretical, bars are great and dames are even better, but in practice they both have the frustrating tendency to close their front doors before Bucky’s ready to pull himself out. This, Bucky reflects morosely, is why he’s always staggering home at an unmentionable hour of the morning, his clothes in shambles and his shoes untied and an unsatisfied roil burning in the pit of his stomach. Bucky’s not ashamed to have needs; he’s a fully grown man, for Christ’s sake, and he hasn’t even been within fifty feet of a nun since he left the orphanage two years ago. But it’s awfully difficult to get those needs met when the fox you’ve been wining and dining––or, okay, soda-ing and necking with behind her folks’ bakery––turns out to be a stone cold bitch.

Bucky heats up all over again thinking about it. Have a little too much to drink, take a little too long to get interested in the proceedings, _one time_ , and apparently that gives a girl license to air all her nasty suspicions about you and your best friend. 

“It’s just, you’re always busy taking care of him,” Vera had said, looking entirely unimpressed as he’d fumbled with the rubber. 

“He needs taking care of,” Bucky had slurred. “Anyway, what are you talking about Steve for? Isn’t tonight all about you and me?”

“It was supposed to be,” Vera had agreed, more sadly than anything else. 

And what was that even supposed to mean? Bucky’s been kissing girls since he grew his first chest hair, but he’s never gotten any closer to understanding them. “I don’t follow. Did you not like the picture?” 

She’d patted him on the shoulder and buttoned his pants back up for him, leaving him gape-jawed and heavy-fingered in her wake. “I’ll see you around, Bucky. You said you had to get back, anyway, right? Well, now you can. Right back to your old ball and chain.” And she’d left––left _him_! Left him, Bucky Barnes, out in the cold!

It’s not the first time this has happened, of course. He’s chased after enough girls that he was bound to run into a few prudes along the way. Ever since he grew into his shoulders and started working as a stock boy down at the King Kullen, though, he’d sort of forgotten what that felt like: the unexpected sting of not being wanted.

 _Well, Steve always wants me_ , Bucky thinks, mutinous, and then carefully amends it to, _Steve always wants me around_. 

He rummages through his coat, but the pockets are completely empty. The burning in his stomach rises up and suddenly his whole body feels hot and frustrated, stifled in some fundamental way. Where the fuck are his goddamn keys? 

Bucky takes a deep breath and tips his face onto the cool brick facade of their apartment building. He usually avoids being honest with himself as a matter of personal pride. Still, it’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. Steve is too small to be really handsome, but he’s smart as a whip and not exactly hard on the eyes. Sometimes Bucky will wake up with his forehead pressed to the nape of Steve’s neck and he’ll think, _Oh_ , before the rest of him catches up and reminds him that it’s a bad idea, that they only reason they share body heat in the first place is because neither of them has any money and their apartment is the size of a postage stamp. Anyway, Bucky spent the better part of his adolescence with wrinkly nuns breathing down his neck and reminding him that Jesus was watching him touch himself at night. He was bound to end up confused.

The key pops up from the thin lining of Bucky’s coat through the ever-widening hole in the pocket. He should probably get around to patching that up one of these days. Or maybe he’ll get Steve to do it; Steve’s got better hands for fixing things than Bucky’s ever had. 

The building stays quiet as he lets himself in and drags himself up the stairs. Most of the apartments are full of workers and young families, the kind of people who have to get up early in the morning. Bucky is also one of these people, but he’s never let a thing like common sense stop him from having a good time, or at least trying to. _Steve wants me around_ , he reminds himself, although he doesn’t actually need to––if there’s anybody Bucky has ever been certain of, it’s Steve. Steve is one of the few constants in Bucky’s life. A sure thing.

Bucky has to concentrate so as not to twist his hand the wrong way and strip the key, so at first he doesn’t notice that the bedroom light is on as he shrugs out of his coat and toes off his shoes. “Bucky? You back already?” he hears, and his head snaps up involuntarily as Steve wanders out to meet him, his cheek smudged with graphite and his sketchbook clutched in one hand. To Bucky’s discerning eye, it looks like he’s wrapped up in at least two sweaters, their heavy winter blanket around his shoulders besides.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Bucky grumbles, remembering all over again the hot pinprick of Vera’s disdain. “What are you doing out of bed? It’s freezing in here.”

“Just wanted to make sure you weren’t some kind of murderer,” Steve says lightly. 

“And if I was? You’d, what, pencil me to death?”

“Aw, you don’t have to be like that.” 

Bucky runs a hand through his hair, feeling bad. “Sorry, I, I need to go to bed.”

“Be my guest.” Steve gestures towards the bedroom with an elaborate flourish, because even though all the old ladies at St. Joe’s think that Steve is a tiny golden angel sent from heaven, he’s actually a complete asshole. “It’s all yours.”

“Yeah, and you’ve got all the covers to speak of with you.”

“I’ll be in after a minute, I’m getting something to drink.”

Bucky figures a few chilly minutes is his only his due after a night like tonight, so he scuttles past Steve to strip out of his grimy, snow-blown suit. The sheets on Bucky’s side of the bed are terrifyingly icy, so he crawls into Steve’s left-over warmth instead, tucking his head beneath the pillow. He thinks about Steve tucked into bed, drawing, well away from the thousand and one fights he always manages to get himself into, and wishes it could be like that always––Steve safe, and Bucky curled into the cozy space he always leaves behind.

Bucky hears footsteps pad back into the bedroom, then a sharp pain as Steve punches him in the shoulder. “Move over, you big lug.”

He darts out a hand to check whether the bed was really that cold or whether he’d been imagining it. “No.” If he goes over there, his feet are going to fall off and then he’s going to _die_.

Steve sighs and makes a bunch of rustling noises, and then Bucky’s entire body is enveloped in warmth Steve drapes the big blanket back on the bed. “Now will you go?”  
Bucky considers his options. “No.”

“I hate you so much, Barnes.”

“No, you don’t.”

“God help me, I don’t,” Steve says ruefully. 

The light clicks off, and then Bucky finds himself forcefully relocated as Steve wriggles into the bed behind him. For someone who looks like a stiff breeze could blow him over, Steve packs a wallop where it counts. “Jesus.”

“You’re the one who chose the hard way.” Steve settles in, one arm tucked into the small of Bucky’s back and one resting on his ribcage. “You okay, buddy? Really?”

“I’m fine. Vera’s a bitch.”

“You shouldn’t stay things like that,” Steve protests, but there’s no heat behind it. Steve doesn’t usually like the girls Bucky goes with.

Bucky lies still for a long moment, the star of Steve’s fingers a welcome counterpoint to Bucky’s slow, thudding heartbeat. “You know I like you, right?”

“Yeah, I figured it out somewhere along the way,” Steve snorts.

He turns over to face Steve, trapping one Steve’s hands under him. “I mean it, I like you––”

“Okay, Buck––”

“––But I don’t, you know, I don’t _love_ you.”

Steve tenses all over. “Gee, thanks.”

“I mean it, Stevie, I––”

Steve tugs his hand out from Bucky’s body, crossing his arms over himself. Bucky doesn’t understand what’s happening; Steve needs protecting, but he’s never needed protecting from Bucky. “I get it.”

“I don’t know if––”

“I know you’re drunk and I know you’re a bastard, Bucky, but you don’t need to push my damn face in it.”

Something is wrong, Bucky realizes, and takes stock of the situation. Steve’s balanced on the edge of the bed now, curled in on himself and flushed down to his collarbone. If Bucky didn’t know better, he’d say Steve looks ashamed, but––“ _Oh_.”

Steve recoils like he’s been gutshot. “Shut up. I take it all back. I definitely hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Bucky says wonderingly, and reaches out a hand to circle his wrist.

“Bucky––” Steve’s tone is warning, but he lets himself be drawn in. 

“You don’t hate me,” Bucky repeats, because it bears repeating, and then Steve’s eyes are fluttering closed and Bucky’s hand is cupped around Steve’s jaw and their noses are mashing and their teeth click painfully––Steve demonstrably does not know what he’s doing, coming from all the wrong angles. It is objectively one of the worst kisses Bucky has ever had the fortune of tripping his way into, but that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all. 

“Oh,” says Steve, once Bucky lets him up for air. He’s not smiling, precisely, but his whole face has transformed, lit up from the inside. “So it’s like that, huh?”

Bucky shrugs casually, a lie up and down, and says, “It seems that way.”

Steve traces circles onto Bucky’s arm, the way he’s done in every silent moment between them for as long as they’ve known each other. He looks away. “And it’s not just because, um, Vera was a, a tease?”

“What? No, Steve, what are you talking about Vera for? This has nothing to do with her.”

Steve shuffles in a little closer. “And you’re not going to forget it in the morning?”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“And you know what it means that––I’m not a girl, Bucky.”

“I told you I’m not that drunk, Steve, come on.”

“But you know it’s different with men than with a girl––”

“Steve, we live less than ten blocks away from the Navy Yard, for God’s sake.”

“There’s no need to blaspheme.”

“I’ll blaspheme you,” Bucky threatens.

Steve huffs out a laugh and rolls them over, so Bucky has to brace himself on his forearms. “Be my guest,” Steve says for the second time that evening, and as Bucky does what he does best––taking care of Steve––the hot wet frustration that has been lancing through him all night bubbles over and evaporates into a fragile, joyous thing sitting in the center of his chest.

* * *

* * *

**MARCH 10, 1939**

Hal, the ham-fisted overseer down at the docks, has never made any secret that he thinks of Bucky as a real defective; when Bucky had applied for the job, he’d eyed up Bucky’s newly-broad shoulders and muttered, “Well, at least it don’t take brains to lift crates.”

Bucky hadn’t said anything. The air had been bad that summer. Bucky had needed the job.

He doesn’t act any dumber than he actually is, so only Hal––who, they can all agree, is a goddamn nightmare––remains convinced that he’s a deficient. Mostly they figure he just likes to keep to himself, which is true enough. The less he says, the fewer lies he has to tell.

“Hey, Barnes, you want in this?” Jimmy Wojcik calls over to him, brandishing the clipboard that technically belongs to Hal but never seems to be within thirty feet of the guy. “Extra shipment came in. You’d get time and a half.”

Bucky considers, time card in his fist. “I don’t know. I kinda got plans.”

“Oh yeah? And are those plans wearing red or blue?”

“I’ll tell you once I see them in the morning,” Bucky drawls.

Jimmy snorts and looks down at his checklist. “Someone will pick up the shift, makes no difference to me who does it. Thought you said you were saving up is all.”  
“Get me next time. I promised I’d be somewhere,” Bucky says as he punches the card into the machine. 

Jimmy lets out a long, low whistle. “Thought you weren’t the marrying type, Barnes.”

“I’m not. I’m not! But not everyone’s looking for a wedding ring, you know.”

“Ain’t you such a lucky one,” Jimmy grumbles, and makes a note. “Okay, you’re out, then. I expect you to report back tomorrow, Myrtle’s got me on the couch since the baby was born.”

Bucky offers him a little salute and realizes, as he picks up his rucksack and heads out of the gate, that he’d like to be Jimmy’s friend: to go out for beers at the end of their shift and compare their scars, share their war stories. But all of Bucky’s best stories are about Steve––all of them––and have been for so long that he can’t begin to spin up a fiction of a life without Steve in it. Besides, he’s usually too busy running after Steve to pay attention to anyone else. It’s probably better that he can’t afford the chance to slip up.

The sky fades out into twilight during his walk home, all the shadows pooling together until the whole street is overlaid in purple. Like an ink wash, Bucky thinks. He’s no artist, but it’s impossible to spend any time with Steve hunched over their tiny table, brush in hand, and not think about how he translates the world into his sketchbook. 

“I don’t know, it’s the only way I feel like I can really see things,” Steve had told him once, drawing as Bucky sat in the window and smoked. “I don’t even know I have an idea until I’ve gotten it down on paper.”

Bucky doesn’t know what that’s like; he’s never had anything to filter the world through, just falls into it knuckles to brick. But the bruises on his hands are a small enough price to pay if––

“You need to let me go,” he hears a familiar voice say levelly, and Bucky’s stomach drops into his knees.

“I don’t think so pal, I saw you going with my girl last week like you needed a lesson or something,” says another voice. Bucky closes his eyes, tries to triangulate their position; he’s only a block away from his front door, so he knows the neighborhood pretty well. 

“I think we both know that’s not true,” Steve responds, rock steady and further evidence in the case Bucky’s constantly building in the building in the back of his mind, that Steve is a nut who has lost whatever sense of self-preservation he was born with.

“Aw, I guess you’re right. No girl would go with a fairy like you,” says the other man, and then there’s the dull thud of someone getting punched in the face.  
Back when Bucky was a kid, five minutes could stretch out like warm taffy into an entire day; now, anxiety boiling up from his gut, everything slows down in the same weirdly elastic way. He takes a breath and the inhale alone lasts a year. He turns a corner, then another, and then time races forward again as he sees Anton Biryukov on top of Steve, wailing on him like it’s the end of the world.

“Jesus!” Bucky shouts, and runs in to grab Anton by the hair, kicking sharply at the backs of his knees for good measure. “For Christ’s sake, Biryukov, haven’t you got better things to do?” 

Anton whips around, nose bloody and teeth bared, but he lets go of Steve. Bucky’s stomach starts inching back home. “He’s a––”

“You’re out of line,” Bucky interrupts, because he’s not sure what he’s going to do if he hears the rest of that sentence, and then gives Anton a little shake anyway. “And I’m getting really tired of having to pull you off of guys. It’s been, what, ten years now you’ve been like this? You sure you’re not calling him names just because you’re too ashamed to say it about yourself?”

“Fuck you,” Anton spits, his attention focused on Bucky now. Steve slumps back into the street, clearly relieved, breathing hard. Breathing.

“You wish you could, buddy,” Bucky says, and before Anton can do anything about that, Bucky tosses him away like the trash he is. “Get out of here.”

Anton finally seems to recognize that he’s not the biggest asshole in this fight, and he scrambles away, wiping the blood off his face as he goes.

Bucky looks down at Steve, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“This wasn’t exactly how I planned to tell you this,” Steve says sheepishly, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet, “but happy birthday.”

Buck tugs him in close. “You’re a punk, you know that?”

“I didn’t even go looking for him, honest. I was out for a walk and he just found me.”

“The fact that you even have to clarify proves my point, Rogers.”

Steve winces and elbows Bucky in the side. “You’re an ass.”

“Yeah, and you’re bruised to hell. Come on. Maybe we’ve got something in the ice box you can put on the black eye you’re gonna have in ten minutes.”

Steve limps all the way back to the apartment, and he collapses into a chair as soon as Bucky locks the door behind them, his face pale even in the orange light of the desk lamp.

“He really did a number on you, huh?” Bucky says, and then inhales sharply when he notices a dried streak of blood under the hair at Steve’s temple. “Oh, you idiot, you could’ve really been hurt.”

Steve barely has the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not the point, Steve, and you know it. He wouldn’t have come after you if you weren’t so––” 

“What? What? Just say it, Buck.” Bucky draws away, tries to give himself time by running a dishtowel under the tap, but Steve’s having none of it. “So small? So helpless? Such a, what, such a priss?”

“God, Steve, no,” Bucky protests, but it’s too late––Steve’s face is caught in the ugly space between mulish and furious, and he snatches the dishtowel out of Bucky’s grip. 

“I can take care of myself, thanks,” he says, maybe as snotty as Bucky’s ever heard him, scrubbing so hard at the blood that Bucky recoils in sympathetic pain. 

“Well, excuse me if it doesn’t alway look that way from over here.”

Steve whirls on him, jamming a hard finger into Bucky’s sternum. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you have no idea what it’s like to be me, none at all––”

And Bucky can’t take it, that awful hard look on Steve’s soft face, so he grabs him by the ears and reels him in, tries to kiss all the angry breath out of him.

Steve opens his mouth in soft pink welcome the way he always does, and then, when Bucky presses in, bites the shit out of his tongue.

“Ow, fuck!” Bucky yells.

“Yeah, fuck yourself, Barnes,” Steve breathes back. They look at each other for a long moment. Then they’re both scrambling for the bed. 

Steve pushes at Bucky’s shoulders in two unforgiving jabs, and Bucky doesn’t know whether it’s because Steve has always been much stronger than he looks or because he’s Bucky’s glaringly obvious Achilles’ heel, but Bucky goes down hard. “You––are––such––an––insufferable––prick––” Steve snarls, attacking each button on Bucky’s shirt like it’s a stand-in for Bucky’s smart mouth. “You think you can protect me? You think you can do anything for me?” Bucky growls and tries to surge up, to flip them over, but Steve says, “I don’t think so,” and pins Bucky to the bed by dropping a knee into the crook of his left elbow. 

“You’re a real head case, Rogers,” Bucky snaps back, to which Steve responds by shifting his weight until Bucky’s elbow screams in pain; Bucky starts tearing at Steve’s shirt one-handed and chants, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

“I’d honestly like to see you try.”

The smirk on Steve's face is so aloof that Bucky goes cold all over for one razor-edged instant before his irritation returns, crackling hotly up his spine. “Who the hell do you even think you are?” he asks, and manages to hook his knees around Steve’s hips, finally giving him enough leverage to roll them over.

Steve bares his teeth and refuses to meet Bucky’s eyes, glaring at the ceiling over his shoulder. He snakes a hand up and for a horrifying second Bucky thinks, _It’s done, it’s over, he’s finally going to sock me one and mean it_ , but instead he yanks Bucky’s armpit hair so hard that Bucky’s eyes water.

Bucky yowls in pain and reaches up to flick the tender cartilage of Steve’s ear, and is stopped in his tracks when he sees anew the faint brown bloodstain on Steve’s temple. He traces the path of Anton’s fist, the blood flaking away under his ragged nails, and the fight abruptly goes out of him: all he can picture is Steve on the pavement, the awful stillness of his ribs. “Steve,” he says.

“What,” Steve answers, still angry.

But the only thing Bucky can do is repeat, “Steve,” helplessly, and tuck his head into the crook of Steve’s neck, his mouth against the flittering pulse point. Steve’s chest expands, contracts, expands again, and with each rise and fall Bucky gives thanks.

“Bucky?” Steve shifts under him uncertainly, still tense but no longer wound fit to breaking. 

“You could have died,” Bucky finds himself saying. He tries to stop up his mouth by pressing kisses to Steve’s throat, but he can’t stop himself from confessing between each one. “Every time, I think––this is it. This is the last one.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes out, voice impossibly gentle, and then his fingers are in Bucky’s hair. “Oh, Bucky. I’m fine.”

“I know,” Bucky says, but his voice cracks and it doesn’t sound anything like sure.

“Buck,” Steve whispers, and then because in this like in all things Steve is a thousand time braver than Bucky will ever be, “Bucky, sweetheart, I’m right here. I’m always gonna be right here.”

* * *

* * *

MEMORANDUM  
September 9, 2014

To: ALL FORMER S.H.I.E.L.D. FIELD OPERATIVES WITH CLEARANCE LEVEL 9 OR HIGHER  
Cc: [REDACTED]  
From: FORMER DEP. DIR. MARIA HILL  
Re: Disabling “Code WS” protocol  


* * *

[REDACTED] has been in [REDACTED]’s custody for three months without unexpected or undue incident. His treatment has progressed his current status from LVL 10 - HOSTILE DANGER to LVL 7 - NEUTRAL DANGER. We are officially disabling the CODE WS PROTOCOL on a trial basis. Note that this includes but is not limited to both RED PHASE and BLACK PHASE of the CODE WS PROTOCOL.

Should [REDACTED]’s status rise above LVL 7 - NEUTRAL DANGER, the CODE WS PROTOCOL will be reviewed and may be reinstated.

* * *

**JUNE 1, 1943**

It takes almost three hours and two separate trains to get from Camp Lehigh back to Manhattan, and Bucky spends the entire time fiddling with his dog tags.  
“Look at you, you’re a wreck,” says the kid sitting across from him. He’s in uniform, too, and so young that his Adam’s apple sticks out like a fist from his scrawny throat.“Don’t worry, your girl will take you back once she sees you all kitted up. Girls like soldiers.”

“Sure,” Bucky grunts, and immediately pictures Steve’s face––not the smile Bucky has spent his entire life coaxing out, but the grim, slow-burning anger Steve had sunk into as soon as Bucky had ripped open his draft letter. He’d sent Bucky off to boot camp with a back so scored up it looked like he’d been flayed. It hadn’t even been good, Steve furious and nearly silent the whole time, Bucky rutting dumbly between his legs. He’d tried to bring Steve off afterwards, but it always takes Steve a while to get worked up even on the best of days; he’d eventually muttered, “It’s not gonna happen,” and pushed Bucky’s hands away, curling in on himself on the edge of their bed. 

“Well, she makes you look that bleak, maybe you’d better just leave her,” the kid says wisely. 

“Too late for that.”

“Knocked her up already, huh?” The kid stands up and tucks something into Bucky’s hand as the train rolls to a stop. “You ship out in ten days, at least. Try not to make it twins.” He winks like the most virginal Don Juan the world has ever seen. “See you on the front.”

Bucky looks down to see a three-rubber tin resting in his palm, _FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASES!_ and _RESERVOIR ENDS!_ emblazoned on either side. 

_This_ is the best the U.S. Army has to offer? Inverts and boys so wet behind the ears you can practically see the shine of it? Jesus fucking Christ.  
He shoves the tin in his back pocket and makes his way out onto the platform, automatically scanning the crowd for Steve’s blond head even though he knows (he _knows_ , because he’s an idiot and he never wrote to tell him what time the train was coming in) that Steve won’t have come. It’s always been like that for Bucky, though. When Steve is there, Bucky turns to him inexorably, a compass pointing north; when he’s not, Bucky’s left spinning in the hollow of his absence. 

Steve, of course, is nowhere to be found, but the kid from the train is locked in a sticky clinch with a yellow-haired girl as gangly as he is. Bucky hitches his bag higher up on his shoulder, steadfastly looking straight ahead as he climbs around, over, and in one horrifying case straight through the dozen other heartfelt reunions standing between him and the 7th Avenue exit. He tumbles out onto the sidewalk, takes a deep whiff of the familiar Midtown reek, and realizes, staring up at Hotel Pennsylvania’s gaudy marble columns, that he has to turn right back around and head down into the subway. 

He’s hit by an unexpected pulse of revulsion; he suddenly hates the idea of returning to Brooklyn’s tangled net of streets, to Montague Avenue’s prim row of brick facades, to his maybe-empty apartment, to Steve’s face, which has been gray with anxiety since Pearl Harbor. It seems easier to stay nestled here between the tall modern buildings, one anonymous uniform camouflaged among the thousands––but the fact is that even when Bucky has no reason to expect Steve, he reaches for him. So back to Brooklyn he goes.

The apartment is dark and quiet when he makes it inside, and their bed twists at him like a whole body bruise, so he dumps his gear by the door and decides to head out again. It’s strange to button up his civilian clothes after weeks in Army green, stranger still to run Pomade through his hair, but Bucky Barnes hasn’t spent his whole life building up his reputation only to ruin it before he goes off to war.

In ten days, he will be in England. In eleven, he might be dead.

No. No. Better not to think about that. In ten days, he will be in England. In eleven, he might be a hero.

He’s lived on Montague Street long enough that his feet know where to go even when the rest of him is walking blind, so he ends up safely at Kinley’s with a Piels in one fist and a tumbler of bottom-shelf booze in the other. He only notices his mistake when he turns to hand the beer to Steve and nobody’s there but the hulking figure of Anton Biryukov, hunched over his own drink. Oh. Oh, right.

“You doing all right, Barnes?” Anton asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky calls back, tensing automatically even though it’s been a couple years since Anton stopped beating up queers and started sucking their pricks instead. “Why you asking?”

“Haven’t seen you around in a while, heard your number might’ve been up.”

Bucky relaxes, salutes Anton with his glass. “Sergeant James Barnes, at your service.”

“Yeah?” Anton takes a long pull on his beer, wipes the foam off his lip with the back of one hand. “Didn’t know they were taking guys like you. Like us.”

“I didn’t exactly tell them,” Bucky admits. He’d thought about it––thought about staying behind, spending the whole war wrapped around Steve––but then he’d’ve had to say it out loud and watch it get written down next to his name, marked there forever, and he didn’t think he could stand it. Nor the look on Steve’s face when he found out Bucky had dodged out on his country. “But they didn’t ask too many questions, so I don’t think they’re that het up about it one way or another.”

“Must not be,” Anton agrees, taking another swallow of his beer. “Your boy’s a brave one, though, ain’t he? Too bad they saddled him with a 4-F, he’s got enough attitude to kill at least a dozen Krauts.”

“––What?” says Bucky, gone all over cold. “Steve? What are you talking about?”

Anton raises his eyebrows. “What, you didn’t think they’d actually take him when he tried to enlist, did you? I know you’re a sap, Barnes, but––”

“Enlist,” Bucky repeats.

“Yeah, obviously,” Anton answers, then raises his hands and starts backing away from Bucky’s glare. “I mean––”

“I need some air,” Bucky interrupts him, and downs the rest of his drink. “Here, have another beer on me.”

“Barnes.”

“Take the fucking beer, Biryukov.”

Anton takes the beer. Bucky pushes past him. 

The raids have lightened up since the war started, so it doesn’t take him long to find another bar, another whiskey, a new pair of hands to circle around his waist. He used to stomp out after the worst of their fights, made sure to come back smelling like someone else’s perfume or with his throat bright red from a rougher stubble than Steve’s ever been able to grow. He’s gone on plenty of dates for show since then, but he hasn’t been with anyone other than Steve in, God, three or four years. None of it’s enough to distract him ( _ten days, eleven days, ten, eleven_ ), but he lets the kid he’s picked up touch him anyway. Every handprint feels sticky with shame.  
He closes his eyes. He watches Steve’s lungs fill up with gray French mud. He opens them again. 

Bucky takes a deep breath. Steve isn’t going to France or Italy or any other place. _4-F_ , Anton had said, and Bucky knows that means, _not acceptable for military service. Ineligible_.

The kid executes a little shimmy against Bucky’s hips, and for one achingly awful second, Bucky thinks about it. The kid’s got long fingers and a delicately freckled nose. Bucky can imagine them pressed into his thighs.

 _Ineligible_ , he thinks. It should be a relief. 

_Ineligible_.

 _Ineligible_.

“Hey, buddy, let up a minute, I’m going out for a smoke,” Bucky says.

The kid glances up at Bucky through his girlish eyelashes and asks, “You want me to come with?” He’s not much bigger than Steve, although he’s definitely younger. Barely out of high school. Bucky reflexively pictures him in fatigues and has to fight down an immediate, overwhelming wave of nausea. 

Jesus, is this what it’s going to be like for him now? Will everything always come back to the war?

“Nah, that’s okay,” Bucky says, shaking his head, and the kid’s entire body shifts from interest to disdain in two seconds flat. Bucky stumbles away from him and out the door, fishing his cigarettes out of his coat pockets. It takes him three matches to light. He wishes he hadn’t spent so much time on his damn hair.

Steve, drowning in mud. Steve. Steve. Christ.

In ten days, he’s going to be in England. In eleven days––

“Bucky?” Steve’s ragged voice says out of nowhere, and then Steve himself barrels into Bucky’s side, all vicious fingernails and knobby knees. “What in the hell are you doing out here? I’ve been looking for you all over the place.”

Bucky shrugs, wobbling slightly on his feet. “No one was home.”

“I was out getting something for dinner. I came back, you’d already been and gone.”

“I figured I’d be in the way.”

Steve looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “Funny way of showing it. You left your bag right in front of the door. I almost broke my neck on it.” 

Bucky shakes his head. He and Steve have found each other on a hundred street corners and a thousand back alleys, but for some reason Bucky hadn’t expected to see him again. The apartment had been unoccupied and Bucky’s been sleeping alone for two months. 

Steve snatches the cigarette out of Bucky’s mouth and stomps it into the curb. It had only been half-smoked. A waste. “We’re going home,” he says flatly.

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky snorts, and then lets Steve grab him by the scruff of the neck more out of surprise than anything approaching contrition.

“We _are_ ,” Steve insists, and practically frogmarches Bucky the whole way there. 

One of the only good things about scraping out a living in a dump like Brooklyn Heights is that no one looks that closely at two men out after dark, even when they’re touching from shoulder to hip. Steve’s small, not a fairy––he’s never sashayed his hips or worn makeup a day in his life––and no one’s ever assumed anything about Bucky when he didn’t want them to. Compared to the spectacle the drag queens make of themselves, he and Steve are hardly worth a second glance. 

The spreading late-night heat has crept into their apartment, turned the air so thick with humidity that Bucky can almost feel its weight. “I’m gonna take a bath,” he says.

“You do that,” Steve answers coolly without turning around.

The water’s tepid right out of the tap, no need to warm it up on the stove first, and he tries not think of Steve’s lungs on muggy nights, working twice as hard as they should have to. The door creaks open, and Bucky stiffens up, his pants still around his ankles. “That was closed for a reason.”

Steve shrugs and sits down on the toilet. In just his shorts and mismatched gray socks, the knobs at the end of his collar bones look strangely soft and vulnerable.  
Bucky finishes peeling off his suit and hands his jacket to Steve. “I don’t want it to get wrinkled,” he explains, snotty. 

“Get in the fucking bathtub, Barnes,” Steve says. He hangs the jacket up on the door knob.

“Jesus, Steve, I’m not a child, you don’t have to order me around,” Bucky huffs, and sinks down into the water. “You think I don’t know how to wash my own hair?”

“You think I don’t know when someone else touched you?” Steve asks, his voice so cold that Bucky’s whole body punches through its numb fury straight into the first bright shock of fear. “I want to make sure you clean him off before––”

“Before what?”

Steve looks him straight in the eye and says, very low, “You ought to get yourself clean.”

Bucky ducks under the water, what little good it does. It’s the same temperature as the air, clammy and too warm by half, like the sweat that habitually pools at the small of his back has spread a thin, disgusting film over his whole body. He closes his eyes. Steve is drowning again, and Bucky along with him. He forces himself back up.

“––Everywhere,” Steve continues, standing and turning on his heel towards the open door.

He takes in a deep breath and slides down under the water again, his limbs strangely buoyant. He stays and stays and stays, until his lungs burn from the effort, until nearly every part of him feels stripped from the hard, mud-soaked kernel that now knows how to kill a man down a sightline and a hundred yards away. Ten days. Eleven. He rinses the soap out of his hair and his eyes and the stinging cracks in every one of his knuckles. He runs his hands along his whole self, perfunctorily, until he reaches back between his legs, behind his prick, brushes his thumb over the most vulnerable part of him. He can’t feel it with the water in the way, but he knows there are fine hairs there. He grits his teeth and slips the tip of his thumb in. It does not go easily. 

He takes a breath, breaches a little further. It just hurts. Nothing catches him behind the belly and drags him blindingly, inexorably forward, the way he remembers it, but––it’s fine. Steve knows how to work him over, anyway, even when he’s not already gasping for it. He’s always gasping for it, though. Isn’t he? Bucky Barnes, that sly dog. Goes with all the girls. 

Went with all the girls. No girls on the front.

No Steve, either. Thank God.

_Ineligible._

He retreats. Steve is waiting for him on the bed, still in his shorts and socks, his face set in a strangely ugly sneer. “You finished?”

Everything feels hot to the touch. His eyes. His skin. Steve’s gaze, settled on his hip bones. He imagines Steve in his shorts begging the Army to take him in. The fear rolls away again. Steve’s face darkens––at what, Bucky can’t tell. The expression on Bucky’s face? He doesn’t know what he looks like. From the inside he feels bound up, so angry he can barely move. “Saw Biryukov down at Kinley’s.”

“Yeah? What’d he have to say for himself?” 

Steve’s shoulders hunch; he knows what’s coming, Bucky realizes, battening down for the attack, and Bucky almost wants to prove him wrong for the satisfaction of it, but––“4-fucking-F, Steve? What in God’s name were you thinking?” 

“I don’t know, that I should serve my country in her time of need? That they need all the able-bodied men they can get?”

“Okay, so what, they don’t need you––”

Steve’s face turns so red it’s almost purple. His hands snap out. Bucky’s still standing, too far for Steve to reach, but he feels their doubled pressure in his collarbone anyway. “What exactly is that supposed to mean, you son of a bitch––”

“Don’t call me that, you––you fucking _idiot_ ––”

“Don’t you condescend to me,” Steve hisses, sticking out a foot as Bucky steps forward. Bucky ends up sprawled painfully between Steve and the bed, all his breath knocked out from Steve’s knee digging into his ribs. “Don’t you go thinking you’re better than me.”

“When have I ever thought I was better than you,” Bucky straight-up yells. 

“When haven’t you,” Steve counters, and throws his weight behind his hands as he pushes Bucky fully onto the bed. Bucky hadn’t bothered with a towel, since there’s no part of him Steve hasn’t seen a hundred thousand times, but he regrets it now that the only thing between them is Steve’s panting, iron-hot anger. The sheets, he notes distantly, need a wash. Then Steve is on him, one hand gripping tightly at the back of his neck and the other at his waist, Steve’s knees bracketing his thighs. He bites down in the center of Bucky’s shoulder blades.

“I have never in my life thought I was better than you,” Bucky grits out. 

Steve clamps his teeth a little harder, vicious, before letting go. “You go ahead and tell yourself that.”

“What––” Bucky starts, and then yelps as Steve bites him again, lower. “What are you even talking about, you little shit?”

“Saving––” Steve says, and bites lower still. “––Me––” A bite. “––From––” Another. “––Myself––my own fights. As if you’ve ever had the right.”

“Helping you is the only thing I––” Bucky protests, and then loses it as Steve puts his mouth between Bucky’s legs, licking–– _in_ , sudden and hard. Bucky can’t stop himself from falling forward onto his arms, closing his eyes and tucking his face into the crook of his elbow. Steve doesn’t stop. “Oh my God,” Bucky croaks.

“Take it,” Steve pulls out just long enough to say, his voice flat and serious, still lanced through with anger. He goes back down, smacking the insides of Bucky’s thighs to make him spread a little wider. “Take it.”

Bucky has always taken anything Steve will give him. His concentration narrows entirely down to the wet, hot point of Steve’s tongue. In. In. In. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it doesn’t feel like it did the only other time they’ve done this, Steve flushed with desire and so, so soft around the edges, Bucky on his back with a hand resting in Steve’s hair. It had been––romantic, then. Easier, if not easy. 

Steve shifts his hands to pinch at the tender spot behind Bucky’s janky knee, the place he used to kiss before it didn’t keep Bucky out of the army. “Pay attention to me when I’m touching you.”

“Fuck you,” Bucky spits, but it’s too late; he’s back within the confines of his own body. 

“You wish,” Steve says, anything but soft. He shifts his weight back off of Bucky, one hand still clamped onto Bucky’s hip. 

Bucky hears the drawer open, then the unmistakeable sound of the Vaseline jar being unscrewed. “Not even gonna ask first?”

“You been without for, what, three months, now? I know you, Buck. I know how much you want it,” Steve says, his voice as dry as dust and getting meaner as he goes.

It’s almost true. Every goddamned night for twelve weeks, Bucky wrapped himself up in his thin sheets and thought about all the empty space Steve wasn’t burrowing into. But this––Steve grunting with the effort of screwing one greasy finger into him, careless––isn’t what he wanted. He turns his face into his arms on the bed when Steve jams another finger in, closes his eyes against the burn of it. 

“Jesus, why aren’t you––fuck, Bucky, come on, I just want––”

“What?” Bucky snaps, and then Steve twists in a way that lights up every length of muscle along Bucky’s spine, so arching his back feels almost as good as Steve’s fingers suddenly do. “Oh my God, Steve––”

“Yeah, that’s my boy,” Steve pants.

“Don’t call me that,” Bucky hisses, jerking his head around just in time to see Steve roughly shoving the metal ring down over his mostly-soft prick. Bucky’s better at the whole process, always has been; he’s the one who asked around and found a place to buy the ring, and he’s usually the one tucking Steve into it, adjusting it until it’s firm against Steve’s body and he can start kissing Steve ready. It just looks painful, the rough way Steve forces the metal ring down, and the desperate dry rub of his hand after. “I’m not your boy.”

“Yeah, tell yourself that, Barnes.”

“You know you can’t keep it up when you rush, you’ll just end up disappointing both of us.”

“Shut the hell up,” Steve shouts, and slicks himself up even though he’s only barely hard. “Shut the hell up. I can call you anything I want to.”

“Sure thing, 4-F, it’s a free country after all,” Bucky sing-songs, harsh, and then has to swallow a groan as Steve shoves himself in. 

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” Steve chants in time as he thrusts, and then he grabs Bucky’s hips and adjusts the angle, getting in a little deeper. It’s not what Bucky wants, but what Bucky wants isn’t––Bucky is never going to unlearn how to shoot someone in the back and Steve is never going to be content with safety when he could be risking his neck for the greater fucking good. In ten days, Bucky will be in England. In eleven days, he might never get this again: might never get Steve’s anger worked out in hot breath on every knob of his spine, might never feel the unwelcoming stretch of Steve pushing into him before either of them are exactly ready. But Bucky will gladly take a vicious Steve over no Steve at all, so he closes his eyes and sends up a quick bargain to God as Steve’s hips snap smartly into his–– _Do whatever you have to with a damn sinner like me, but keep him safe, all right? Keep him safe._

* * *

Of course, much of Rogers’ early life has been extensively––if not exhaustively––covered in H.P. Byers’ excellent biography, _Our Star-Spangled Man, A History_ (Penguin 1982), but we must take into account what scant information we have regarding the period between his mother’s death in 1935 and his induction into the SSR program in 1943. Surviving documentation of his life during this period is sufficiently rare that several noted academics, including Byers, have suspected government-supported record tampering, although no one has yet uncovered concrete evidence of anything more malicious than a habitual lack of concern for members of the underclass. 

We do know, thanks to the 1940 U.S. Census, that Rogers was sharing an apartment at 166 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights with long-time best friend and future sharpshooter of the Howling Commandos, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. We also know that, while Barnes’ occupation was listed as “dockworker,” Rogers’ read “artist.” Although Rogers was a gifted cartoonist, many early biographers considered this listing to be more wishful thinking than fact. It is certainly true that Rogers held a variety of odd jobs after his mother’s death, and the one surviving letter Rogers wrote to his mother’s sister in 1939 mentioned, with typical self-deprecating humor, that Rogers often lost better-paying positions due to his poor health. However, recent scholarship has unearthed Rogers’ name in several works associated with the WPA’s Federal Art Project (see particularly R. Ghupta’s 2001 article “Death Comes to the Übermensch: Post-WWII Propaganda and the Fall of the First Superhero”), and it seems likely that Rogers would have been fairly well-known within the tight-knit Brooklyn artistic community.

Brown, Delilah. “Before the Serum: Captain America’s Missing Years.” _Journal of American History_ 90.4 (2004): 1295-321. Print.

* * *

Brown’s groundbreaking 2004 article, though well-intentioned, was fundamentally misguided. However, the facts as Brown revealed them should not be discounted, only rearranged. Steve Rogers did, in 1940, live in a Brooklyn Heights apartment with Bucky Barnes; Steve Rogers did, between 1939 and 1942, participate in several WPA visual arts and neighborhood enhancement projects; Steve Rogers did, in 1943, manage to enlist into the United States Army, despite no fewer than four previous refusals under four different names. What Brown curiously fails to mention was that the apartment had only one bedroom; that Brooklyn Heights was, at the time, a veritable hotbed of gay activity; that Brooklyn’s artistic community was intimately intertwined with its gay community; and that Steve Rogers only began trying to enlist so desperately after Bucky Barnes had already been drafted. 

Sanchez, Julio B. “Captain America, Not Just For Drag Queens Anymore.” _Queer Icon(ography)_. Ed. Marcela Price. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2009. 81-122. Print.

* * *

Dear Buck or should I say Sgt. Barnes,

I know we said we wouldn’t, but, it seems to me you deserve at least one letter from me as much as anyone deserves a letter from someone. And I’ll admit I’m selfish too. I don’t want you to forget me or New York, because we’re both lonely without you. And although you’ve taken every important part of me with you, I’m afraid to inform you that you must have left a little of your own stupid self behind, because tonight when Mrs. O’Rourke’s radio came on through the walls as it always does I entirely forgot you weren’t coming home. I waited and waited for you to come in the door and drag me out of my chair to dance, to go dancing, but you never showed. 

So. You owe me a night on the town. 

Anyway, since Brooklyn can’t have you, you’ll have to pretend imagine I’m there with you instead. You can dance it up on whatever mud you’re sleeping on. And well, I suppose you know well enough what you should do after that. Think of me, you miserable punk.

Yours,  
S.

* * *

(If you can't see the video, click [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi7dyE36l08).) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come cry about Steve with me on [tumblr](http://tomato-greens.tumblr.com)!


End file.
